Sausages and similar meat emulsion encased products are made by filling natural animal intestines or similar artificial casings with meat, which is then formed into links by twisting sections to narrow the casing and form the ends of sequential links. Modern sausage linking machines commonly employ a system whereby sections of casing are placed over and around lengths of stuffing tubes. As pumped meat emulsion exits the stuffing tube, it is packed into the casing. The casing is gradually filled from the initial end to the following end and is thereby drawn away from the end of the stuffing tube. As the casing is being filled with meat emulsion and being forced way from the stuffing tube, the encased meat product is twisted by machine into links of predetermined size.
The twisting of the casing into links is achieved by the encasing machine continually rotating the casing horizontally along the stuffing tube. As the filled casing exits the encasing machine, a linking device binds the casing at pre-determined distances and stops the rotation at that point. By binding and stopping the filled casing, a link division is formed at the location of the bind. A twist is added to the link juncture by the fact that the link itself has stopped rotating, but the rest of the unfilled casing continues to rotate relative to the new link. Because it is the unfilled casing that rotates, and not the link being formed, there is a tendency for the unfilled casing to twist about the stuffing tube and bind against it, which hinders production. This twisting and binding is a particularly common problem when filling natural casings.
It is therefore a principal object of this invention to provide a method and a means for filling natural casing while reducing or eliminating the rotational twisting and binding of the unfilled casing.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a thrust collar that is rotationally enabled such that as it applies longitudinal force to a casing along a stuffing tube a portion of the thrust collar will rotate with the casing and thereby reduce or eliminate the rotational twisting and binding of the unfilled casing.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a method and means whereby a rotationally enabled thrust collar may be manually or automatically controlled such as to urge a casing along the stuffing tube.
These and other objects will be apparent to those skilled in the art.
A thrust collar for slidably mounting on an elongated hollow stuffing tube of a meat emulsion encasing machine, comprising a main body having a center bore and a radially extending annular flange, and a disk rotatably mounted on a forward end of the main body and having a center bore registering with the center bore on the main body and being adapted to engage an end of the tubular casing on a stuffing tube so that the disk can rotate with respect to the main body.